THE STORY - A seaside town in the province of Zhejiang, eastern China, Sep 2016. Ten years after her young daughter Lingdang was abducted and then died in a bungled ransom handover, Bai Lan (Song Jia) is still angry at the initial detective's inability, Chen Hao (Wang Qianyuan), to settle the case and the police's eventual closure.

Bai Lan is now dying of lung cancer and visits hospital for treatment on a regular basis; Chen Hao, who retired from the force a long time ago and has become a seafood salesman, is still pursuing the case in his own time, though he receives little thanks from Bai Lan.

Visiting the scene of Lingdang’s death on the coastal road by Daqingshan – a location known only to the police of the time – Chen Hao finds some joss sticks, and the police grudgingly agree to let him continue his investigation with the help of an inexperienced young detective, Wang Xingxing (Li Jiuxiao).

Security cameras show someone arrived to burn them early in the morning of 14 Sep, and Chen Hao also finds tyre tracks nearby. Wang Xingxing is transferred to the city’s main police force and Chen Hao continues on his own. He finds a car whose tyres match the tracks and chases the hooded driver to a noodle restaurant, but the latter escapes. When the police still refuse to officially re-open the case, Chen Hao burns all his files in disgust.



Then one day a young girl, Li Zhuzhu, is kidnapped when out walking on the beach with her grandfather, Li Aijun (Feng Yuanzheng), a former physics teacher. A police team, led by Tian (Hu Ming) and including Wang Xingxing, waits for the kidnapper’s ransom call to the girl’s mother (Wang Sisi). Meanwhile, Bai Lan visits the noodle restaurant and finds an umbrella the kidnapper left behind.

It belongs to a company selling healthcare products and, after bribing one of its salesmen to give her a list of clients, Bai Lan sends it to Chen Hao and asks him to trace their addresses. In the meantime, the kidnapper has demanded RMB400,000 ransom and, because of similarities between this case and Lingdang’s, Chen Hao is invited to join Tian’s team.

The kidnapper is using exactly the same method for the ransom handover as a decade ago, involving a waste bin at a ferry terminal, so Chen Hao (and Wang Xingxing) are one step ahead of him this time.